Are Junior Doctors Underpaid in the UK?

Prologue

Welcome to my first issue! I am very excited to launch this newsletter which will inform and inspire you on a weekly basis with all things A level and applying to medicine, both for educational and for informative purposes. Plus the weekly topics in healthcare and medicine will be right here, plus my thoughts on them!

A bit about me…

I’m Kajan Sivakumar who is a 16 year old chap who has just finished his GCSEs and hoping for great results on the 25th of August. Having already made my choices of subjects to do in A level:

• Biology

• Maths

• Chemistry

• History

Looking at these subjects you may conclude that I would want to do medicine due to the big 3 of Biology, Math and Chemistry together - and you would be 100% right. Helping the people most in need is a necessity of mine and medicine, for me, is the best combination of that and my scientific curiosity and eagerness.

That’s enough about me, now let’s get into the hot topic this week - being junior doctor pay.

Are Junior Doctors Underpaid in the UK

This topic is really sensitive and controversial, therefore, I just disclaim that this is what I think that all members of the public and in the medical field should know about this area and why I believe that these incredible people are underestimated to a significant extent.

Starting salary

The average graduate pay is 24k in a 9am-5pm job. A new doctor straight out of medical school earns £28 808 per year, which is around £13.81 pounds per hour. In true respects, the pay is much more than this as doctors are contracted to an average 48 hour work week rather than the 40 hour work week that most graduates have. That seems great, right? But just hold on, the extent of work and effort needed to become a doctor should mean more pay, or does it?

Doctors need to spend 5/6 years in medical school, 2 years more than the average undergraduate student, with intense workloads and lives as medical students. Not only being physically expensive, in material and monetary terms, deciding to do medicine in the first place is incredibly expensive. This is due to the popularity of government loans in paying for the price of £9,250 fees for 6 years, not even including the living costs such as accommodation and food. This means that many junior doctors (and seniors due to compound interest) are going to be paying a substantial percentage of their salary dedicated to tuition loans. This in itself gives large pressure on foundation doctors which are leading to higher percentage rates of drop out and burnout; this could be fixed with a rise in pay.

Moving forward in your career as a doctor is expensive

Being a doctor is rigorous. Progressing through your career can take a long time, especially in the competitive specialities. This is relevant to this debate as many exams which are required by the NHS to progress you through to the next stage of training cost a lot of money. For example, the FRCS exams, the one you need to signify that you have completed your training, costs £1904 pounds to take. The same fee is applicable for people who have to retake the exam due to not passing the first time around. The countless number of exams and tests taken throughout the journey add up to a great amount of money which is paid out of doctors pockets.

Another problem that may occur is that only the well-off in society would get into the most competitive specialities in medicine. This is due to the fact that as the number of people who want to become a doctor are increasing, the number of degrees and qualification one needs to specialise the the most competitive specialities such as neurosurgery and cardiothoracic surgery also increases. This, of course, requires capital to reimburse for the cost of exams and courses which are not necessary but very handy for someone who wants to get into one of those specialities.

NHS Training

As we stated above, the expenses for one needed to progress is high. But we have not talked about the physical and emotional demand of the job. Being a doctor, you are a very highly skilled (relatively speaking) individual in which you are among a very limited who are indeed that qualified to take on the job. Plus, the legal and personal risk of the employee even going to work is immense and requires a strong willed, motivational individual to pass these hurdles. Most will only finish consultancy when they are mid 30s due to the 7-8 training programs that a lot of people decide to on-take, basically asking someone to leave their whole youth behind in order to complete their aspirations of becoming this consultant.

Besides this, the NHS is free to all citizens in the UK which means that in order to make the system work, doctors are ‘strategically’ underpaid to allow for great results in the fact of allowing for all expenses of people’s treatment to be covered.

Concluding

Of course, earnings will get better with experience, same with all jobs - especially in healthcare. But, the height of the hurdles should not be underestimated, despite the casual underestimation of what healthcare is about in general society in the UK. Making massive sacrifices and working as hard as anyone, these amazing people, in my opinion, do often get misrepresented by their pay and the public.

However, please do not believe that I am forgetting about the other people working in the NHS. The nurses, porters, paramedics and so on are all underpaid in a cunning and calculated fashion by the government in order to prevent high private healthcare costs for people in the UK, which is fair.